The Century Cook Book

Use the receipt given for plain cup cake. Divide the materials; use the whites of the eggs with one part, the yolks and one whole egg with the other. Bake in separate tins; cut before serving; arrange the slices with the two colors alternating on a lace paper.

Use one pound each of butter, sugar, and flour; ten eggs; one quarter teaspoonful of mace and one half cupful of brandy. Mix as directed for butter-cake mixtures. Divide it into two loaves and bake in tins lined with paper forty to fifty minutes in a moderate oven. This cake may be filled with sliced citron and raisins if desired, or may have nuts mixed with it, making a nut cake, or some nuts may be sprinkled over the top before it goes in the oven.

• Whites of 6 eggs.
• ¾ cupful of butter.
• 1¼ cupfuls of powdered sugar.
• 2 cupfuls of flour.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• ¼ teaspoonful of soda.

Mix the materials in the order given, beating well each one before the next is added; add part of the flour and the milk at the same time, then the rest of the flour. Flour the fruit and add it last. More fruit can be used if desired. This will make one large or a dozen small cakes. Bake in a moderate oven about one hour if in one cake.

• 9 eggs.
• 2½ cupfuls of sugar.
• 2 cupfuls of bread-crumbs—Graham preferred.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of ground cinnamon.
• Citron size of small egg.
• ¾ cupful of blanched almonds.
• Grated rind of one lemon.
• ¼ cupful of brandy or rum.
• 2½ ounces of chocolate.
• 1 teaspoonful of ground allspice.

Mix the fruit together and flour it; mix the spices with the sugar. Cream the butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks, then the whipped whites and the brandy, then the flour, and lastly the fruit. Put the mixture in two large tins lined with double paper, and bake in a moderate oven for three hours. If preferred, add the sliced citron in layers as the mixture is poured into the pans. One pound of chopped almonds may be substituted for one of the pounds of currants. This cake will keep any length of time, therefore the quantity may not be too great to make at one time.

These are made of cooked paste, and are very easy to prepare. The cream cakes differ from the éclairs only in form and in not being iced.

• 1 cupful of water.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1½ cupfuls of flour (pastry flour preferred).
• 3 to 4 eggs.
• ½ saltspoonful of salt.

Make small éclairs two inches long, using a tube with opening no larger than a pencil. When baked run a wooden skewer through them, leaving an opening at each end, so the filling will go all the way through. Put the filling in a bag, and press it through the carolines. Cover the top with fondant icing. Have the filling flavored with coffee.

• 6 eggs.
• ½ pound or 1¼ cupfuls of powdered sugar.
• ¼ pound or 1 cupful of sifted flour.
• ½ saltspoonful of salt.
• Flavoring of vanilla, lemon, or orange-flower water.

• ½ pound of almonds.
• Whites of 4 eggs.
• 1¼ cupfuls of powdered sugar.

Pound the blanched almonds to a paste, adding a teaspoonful of rose-water to keep them from oiling; add also the sugar, a little at a time, while pounding the almonds; add a few drops of almond essence and the whipped whites of the eggs; beat thoroughly together. Drop the mixture in balls one half inch in diameter on strips of paper, using a pastry-bag. If not stiff enough to hold their shapes without spreading, add one tablespoonful of flour.

Grate a cocoanut; add to it half its weight of sugar; then stir in the whipped white of one egg. Boll the mixture into balls or cones, and bake in a moderate oven twenty to thirty minutes. If the mixture is too soft to hold its shape, add a very little flour.

Use the Genoese mixture with a few currants added, or the plain pound-cake mixture. Bake in small tins one and a half inches in diameter; take care that they rise evenly so they are flat on top. Ice the top only with any kind of icing.

• ½ cupful of butter.
• ½ cupful of powdered sugar.
• 1½ cupfuls of pastry flour.
• 1 cupful of almonds.
• 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
• Yolks of 3 eggs.

This receipt was obtained in Paris, and makes the little cakes one sees for sale at all the French fêtes, and also on the sea-beaches, where the vender calls so cheerily, “Voici les plaisirs.” They are baked in a kind of small waffle-iron. The plaisirs are rolled as soon as taken from the iron.

Beat to a cream one cupful of butter with two cupfuls of sugar. Add three eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately; then the flavoring. Stir in lightly enough flour to make a paste just firm enough to roll thin. Cut it into circles, and with a smaller cutter stamp out a small circle in the middle, leaving the jumbles in rings. Place them in a floured pan, brush the tops with white of egg, and sprinkle with pounded loaf sugar. The sugar should be in small lumps. Bake in a moderate oven to a light color.

Make the mixture given for jumbles. Cut it into squares or diamonds, place them in floured pans, brush the top with white of egg. Sprinkle with granulated sugar mixed with ground cinnamon. Place a piece of blanched almond in the center of each one.

Make a mixture as directed for jumbles, using only enough flour to make a thin batter. Drop a teaspoonful of batter for each cake on a floured pan. In the oven it runs out into a thin cake, so leave plenty of room for the batter to spread. As soon as the edges begin to brown lift the cakes, and at the oven door roll them around a stick. Leave them in the oven a few moments longer to dry.

• 1 cupful of butter.
• 2 cupfuls of sugar.
• 1 cupful of milk.
• 2 eggs.
• ½ teaspoonful of vanilla.
• Flour.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

Mix in the order given. Use enough flour to roll the dough thin. Cut it into circles, and bake in a moderate oven. Brush the tops with white of egg, and sprinkle them with sugar. Caraway seeds may be mixed with the dough, or sprinkled over the tops if liked. For soft cookies do not roll the dough so thin. Stamp them out with a fluted cutter, and remove them from the oven as soon as baked, not leaving them to dry as for crisp cookies.

Put a half cupful of butter and a cupful of molasses on the fire; as soon as the butter is softened remove them, and add a half cupful of brown sugar, a teaspoonful of ginger, and a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little hot water; then mix in enough flour to make a stiff dough. Roll it very thin, and stamp it into circles.

Beat three eggs together; add four tablespoonfuls of sugar and four tablespoonfuls of melted butter or lard; then enough flour to make a dough stiff enough to roll. Roll it a quarter of an inch thick. Cut it into pieces three and a half inches long and two inches broad. Cut two slits in each piece, and give each one a twist. Fry the crullers in hot fat, the same as doughnuts.

• 2 eggs.
• 1 cupful of sugar.
• 1 cupful of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• Flour enough to make a soft dough.
• 1 saltspoonful each of salt and ground cinnamon.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda and 1 teaspoonful of cream of tartar, or 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder.

Take a piece of raised bread-dough large enough for one loaf. Mix into it one tablespoonful of butter, one cupful each of sugar, raisins, and currants; one half teaspoonful each of ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. Let it rise, which will take some time, and bake the same as bread.

Cream together a half cupful of butter and a cupful of sugar. Add a cupful of milk, and one beaten egg; then two cupfuls of flour mixed with two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Bake in a moderate oven.

• 2 eggs.
• 1 cupful of sugar.
• 1 cupful of flour.
• ½ cupful of hot water.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs together well, add the sugar, then the flour, in which the baking-powder is mixed, and lastly the water. Put it into the oven at once.

Mix well together one cupful of butter, one cupful of sugar, two cupfuls of molasses, and two cupfuls of flour. Drop a few spoonfuls into a pan, in different places, and put it in the oven; it will melt and run together. Let it bake until it begins to harden on the edges; then remove, cut it into squares, and while it is still hot and soft roll each piece around a stick.

• 1 cupful of molasses.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of boiling water.
• 2 to 3 cupfuls of flour.
• 1 teaspoonful each of ginger, ground cloves, cinnamon, and soda.
• ½ saltspoonful of salt.

Add the melted butter to the molasses, then the spices. Dissolve the soda in the boiling water, and stir it into the molasses. Add enough flour to make a very soft dough—too soft to roll. Bake in a biscuit-tin lined with paper, in a moderate oven, for thirty-five minutes. Mix it quickly and put it into the oven at once.

Put together two cupfuls of New Orleans molasses and one cupful of butter, and heat them enough to soften the butter; remove from the fire, and add a teaspoonful each of powdered ginger and cinnamon, and one half teaspoonful of cloves, then three well-beaten eggs. When it is well mixed add alternately, in small quantities, three cupfuls of flour and one cupful of boiling water in which have been dissolved three teaspoonfuls of baking soda.

Make this icing the same as the other, using confectioner’s sugar, which is finer than the powdered sugar, and use a little water with the egg. This makes a soft, creamy icing; the more water used, the softer it will be. If beaten instead of stirred it will become firm enough to hold in place without so much sugar being used, but in this way it dries sooner and is not so creamy. This is a good icing for layer cakes, fancy cakes, and éclairs.

Put a cupful of sugar into a saucepan with one quarter cupful of boiling water and a half saltspoonful of cream of tartar; stir till dissolved, then let it boil without stirring until it threads when dropped from the spoon. Turn it in a fine stream onto the white of one egg whipped to a stiff froth. Beat the egg until the mixture becomes smooth and stiff enough to spread, but do not let it get too cold. Pour it over the cake.

Boil sugar as directed above to the soft ball; then remove from the fire, add the flavoring, and stir it until it looks clouded, and turn it at once over the cake.

Melt in a dry saucepan some chocolate; dilute it with a little water and add enough powdered or confectioner’s sugar to make it of the right consistency. Use it while warm, as chocolate quickly hardens. Flavor it with vanilla.

Melt in a dry pan four ounces of Baker’s chocolate, or of cocoa. Boil one and three quarter cupfuls of sugar with a cupful of water till it threads when dropped from the spoon, the same as for boiled icing. Turn it slowly onto the chocolate, stirring all the time. Use this icing for dipping éclairs and small cakes, and for layer cakes. Chocolate icing loses its gloss when at all stale.

Melt one ounce of chocolate; dilute it with two tablespoonfuls of milk; add two tablespoonfuls of sugar and a quarter teaspoonful of butter; stir till smooth and spread on the cake.

Make the same as the one given above, using very strong coffee or coffee essence to color and flavor it. Use enough sugar to make a soft flowing icing, and dip the cakes into it while it is hot.

• 1 quart of cream.
• ½ pound, or 1 cupful, of sugar.
• 1 vanilla bean or 1 tablespoonful of vanilla extract.